Only caught up till comment 412. It’s ridiculously late again, and I’ve been tired all the time, I need to go to bed.

(Well, I’ve looked into comment 413 a little, and let me just confirm that “evolution” does not mean “progress”. It means descent with heritable modification. It goes wherever the environment presses it, not in a single predictable or irreversible direction.)

Also, on Calming Manatee, scroll down and click on “Summon another Calming Manatee”; on Emergency Kitten, refresh the page.

*fluffy hugs*

*fluffy hugs for yazikus and Beatrice, too*

Beatrice, I’m sure I’ve said it before: I’d love to meet you.

Also, in good news, the Hula Painted Frog is NOT extinct, as it had been believed to be for the past 60 years.

See comment 47 for more information! :-)

Regarding number 10, I think it it perfectly okay to position one’s dating partner either under or on top of one if, and only if, one is constantly telling the truth. No lying allowed.

I like this exegesis.

EM emissions and how they do (not) influence humans, etc.

It’s very easy: radio waves can’t do anything to us. They have way too little energy to ionize anything. Einstein got his Nobel prize for the discovery that the amount of radiation is completely irrelevant for such things – what counts is the frequency, which is inversely proportional to the energy of a photon. Quantum physics: you can’t sum up the energy of several photons; if you want to knock an electron away, a single photon has to do it. Radio waves, by definition, are orders of magnitude below that. All they can do is move electron gases ( = electrons in metals) around.

Makes a lot of sense, actually. Every ice age the Sahara moves south, growing faster at the southern edge than it shrinks at the northern one.

One click away from these is:
Metal-free catalyst outperforms platinum in fuel cellhttp://phys.org/news/2013-06-metal-free-catalyst-outperforms-platinum-fuel.html
Specifically, graphene with iodine at the edges not only speeds up the reaction more than platinum does, but it is also more durable, losing less of its performance over time. This is fucking awesome, because currently most of the global platinum production already goes into fuel cells.

but on the other hand, trolls make a fine effort at being unlikeable, and they don’t give a (anonymous, online) shit…

Oh no. By definition, trolls try to make everyone angry so they can laugh at the angry reactions.

Incredibly Realistic Pencil Drawings

:-o

Awesome.

At this stage in life it just, it makes too much sense in too many ways for me to say it could only be my mind producing these things.

Jumping to conclusions, like it looks you’ve done a lot, is a symptom of anxiety. *more hugs*

and asking incessantly “who abused you as a child”

Lack of both intelligence and empathy. What a combination. *headdesk*

Maybe I didn’t get enough of them as a child…

Neither did I, though in my case the reason is simply that my mom is the most grown-up person I’ve ever encountered – she simply doesn’t need such things.

*hugs again* ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

Dude, you guys are, like, a big fuzzy virtual security blanket.

*more hugs* ^_^

those surgeries will basically give me a closer approximation of the body which I would have had had I been allowed to transition around three or four years old

…You still wouldn’t have grown ovaries or a uterus, though.

*more hugs*

That’s separate from me being transsexual though.

Actually, I’m not sure if there isn’t a statistically significant correlation. (I also think there are lots more people with vaguely intersex conditions than most people think.) But the number of transsexual people I know is definitely too small for allowing statistically meaningful conclusions.

Yes, the point is that my interior mental map of how my body should be, not is currently, includes all of the facets the statistical bellcurve for cisgendered women would include. Not all transsexuals are like this: for some all they want is GRS, for others, they even are just fine with an orchiectomy. For me, I really should have been born cisgendered, because the dysphoria was ridiculous (and still is) due to having the wrong body parts entirely. Cispeople don’t grasp that, understandably to a degree. It would have saved me so much pain, suffering, and trauma had I been able to transition around 3 or 4 and use hormone blockers. Now what? I require surgeries that will cost tens of thousands of dollars, society will deny me coverage for all but one of those surgeries (GRS) which is also effectively denied to me because medicare and masshealth don’t cover it, and I cannot afford private insurance that will of the few private insurance companies that will cover it (and I know that’s changing). In summary, trying to coerce me to be someone I never was is a very bad moral and financial decision on society’s part, because now it has to deal with the consequences of that evil decision in surgeries as well as moral shame for coercion.

Thanks so much for all the hugs ((soft-hugs)), and *kiss on bridge of nose* =~)

I needed hugs <3

Actually, I’m not sure if there isn’t a statistically significant correlation. (I also think there are lots more people with vaguely intersex conditions than most people think.) But the number of transsexual people I know is definitely too small for allowing statistically meaningful conclusions.

That’s interesting, there may be. I guess I meant as far as logical categories there needn’t be per se/necessarily. It could be the case statistically there is, and it would be quite intriguing I think if it was.

broboxley, I was reading an account of an Army chaplain in the Korean War, and what a hero he was for enduring all the marches and tortures the Communist Chinese put him through. And I thought, “Oh, yeah, we do that now.”

Maybe not as much marching, and maybe not as damaging on the torture, but we have folks thousands of miles from their homes getting waterboarded.

Got called out to a reported field fire. Bales of hay apparently ablaze behind the family farm of one of the firefighters on our department. That right there should have indicated to all of us it was dumbasses having a bonfire. Sheesh.

Also regarding Monarchy, I think I mentioned I am left unorthodox neo-monarchist. I don’t pay much attention to the Monarchies currently in power in Europe and mostly don’t care. My form of Monarchy requires empathy tests to be given to prospective candidates who are trained from birth. Of those given the opportunity based on rigorous scientific testing, they would then serve their lifetime as Queen and a new Queen, completely unrelated to their bloodline, would then be selected. Candidates would be groomed from earliest ages based on extensive testing given throughout their entire journey from childhood to adulthood.

So my form of Monarchy (as I understand it) has little to do with bloodlines. Most bloodliners are reenforcing patriarchy in the end, I suspect some are way better than others, to be sure. My form of Monarchy is a threat to the old way I think.

I don’t think anyone shares my beliefs, and I don’t expect them to, it’s just what I believe. I believe that, to get in office, the person has to go through rigorous testing and observation since early childhood, as well as grooming, for the tasks of ruling. There should be scores of candidates like this, in programs classified such that the nature of what it is they are being trained and tested to do looks vague, maybe some type of government special education. Of those scores, one would then be Queen, and no Kings or male rulers are allowed as it is Matriarchial only.

The chances of the form of government I believe in taking hold are very slim. I am not affiliated then with any political party and do not wish to be so now or in the future, as I feel such is futile largely.

I do not believe in Democracy, Republics, Socialism, Marxism, Anarchism, Conservatism, Progressivism, Liberalism, Libertarianism, I only believe in my system and am closed to the influence of the others, as much as I can possibly will to be closed, and see no further point in engaging such political systems on any belief level.

Got called out to a reported field fire. Bales of hay apparently ablaze behind the family farm of one of the firefighters on our department. That right there should have indicated to all of us it was dumbasses having a bonfire. Sheesh.

rq: I’ve got your email; now, as soon as Tech Support (aka, The Husband) can find out what my machine needs to let me open it, I’ll be in business! Tomorrow, perhaps, if he’s got de-stressed from the last week’s-worth of customer boneheadedness.
–
So…anybody here familiar with the Savage Worlds RPG? ‘Cause that’s what’s for dinner, after the brisk serving of Tentacles that we had last week.
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Portia: I’m glad your hosting went well. And it sounds like the wedding was also enjoyable: win/win!
:)
–*hugs* in *chocolate* for David.
Just ’cause.
:)
–

cicely
Sorry about the format, FossilFishy and I use a program available free online called MuseScore. I forgot to pdf-transform what I sent you, though – sorry! (It’s the Horses, they’re just too beautiful at all times of day…)

David
re: the EM emissions
Thanks for that quick and simple summary, that’s actually incredibly helpful. Do you have any links on the topic? PZ/Chris wrote about it a while ago, but I’m still on mobile mode because… I don’t know, and I’m not sure how to search.

Portia
I’m glad the wedding was fun, and I’m glad the fire was a non-emergency!!

My form of Monarchy requires empathy tests to be given to prospective candidates who are trained from birth. Of those given the opportunity based on rigorous scientific testing, they would then serve their lifetime as Queen and a new Queen, completely unrelated to their bloodline, would then be selected. Candidates would be groomed from earliest ages based on extensive testing given throughout their entire journey from childhood to adulthood.

Are you aware that you’ve almost perfectly described the process used to select the reincarnation of a Lama (e.g. Dalai Lama)?

Are you aware that you’ve almost perfectly described the process used to select the reincarnation of a Lama (e.g. Dalai Lama)?

I am not aware of this, that’s curious. I feel rigorous empathy tests along with extensive empathy training should be, at a minimum, given to any holder of political power in any scenario anywhere in the world. Of course that will never happen, because then the sociopaths within globalist cliques, beholden to banksters and oilmen and the likes would have no way to continue their obscene profit margins using religion and other means.

And forget about a Matriarchial system, hell will freeze over first. I mean, I’m serious about my version of Monarchy, but let’s be realistic; it’s never going to happen. I will perservere until death holding to it nonetheless. I’m no longer investing emotional and intellectual energy into political systems that all reduce to rule by a few anyway, with some being kinder forms of patriarchy than others, but ultimately all devolving into rule by a few. It doesn’t matter to me if those few actually do know better than the stupid people they rule over (and they DO know better), it matters not one iota; they are cruel assholes that will continue to use religion to extort people and patriarchal systems (like religion) to control people.

Everyone is free when everyone has Marianne, when everyone has Liberty, a mind free of religion. Patriarchy will never give that to humanity, ever. The idea they will is a lie they sell so they can peddle religion to poor people, both liberal and conservative forms.

My form of Monarchy requires empathy tests to be given to prospective candidates who are trained from birth. Of those given the opportunity based on rigorous scientific testing, they would then serve their lifetime as Queen and a new Queen, completely unrelated to their bloodline, would then be selected. Candidates would be groomed from earliest ages based on extensive testing given throughout their entire journey from childhood to adulthood.

I know this is an utopian idea and all that, but I find it pretty horrible. Just look at the similarity that John pointed out, it says enough, really.
I’d say I wish that child would grow up to spit in the face of her “groomers”, but she would be too brain washed to do it.
You would be taking any sort of choice from someone, in order to shape them into what you deem good. I don’t care whether that would save the whole fucking world, if it’s done on the back of a child who didn’t have any sort of choice in it.

Besides, who would groom that child? Who would shape that child into the savior that you are dreaming about? How would you choose people good enough for such a task?
In the end you would end up with a bunch of people pulling strings of this woman. You might as well have them ruling directly, instead of destroying a person so as to shape her into a puppet.

dongiovanni
I’d take it as a compliment, but probably because it wasn’t meant as one (as Nick points out).

sleepingwych
What Beatrice said. The moment you’re taking choices away from someone, the resulting world is not as perfect as you would want it to be. What if none of those children being groomed actually want to be Queen? What if all of them hate their lives because of this one Purpose someone else has given them? Not a happy place at all. (And what do you do with the leftovers?)
It reminds me of the novel Cyteen by CJ Cherryh, at least the part about grooming a female leader from childhood because [reasons].

I haven’t been and won’t be around much this weekend and the next couple of days, so just a drive-by: I finally caught enough time to read the abortion rights thread. Wow, and kudos to those who dealt with all that. There were some really great contributions (and my FSM but jim was a ghastly and pathetic specimen).
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Always happy to look at photos of black flowers, rq! :-D
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I love purchase like that, carlie! You get a bargain, someone clears out what they don’t want, something great doesn’t get wasted and one less thing goes to landfill.
.FossilFishy that was well and beautifully said. Thank you. I’m sorry your daughter has so much to cope with, billingtondev, and I hope you stick around here if it’s any help at all (I hope it is!). I thought carlie’s advice in #469 was good, and I hope it works …. {{hugs}} if you’d care for ’em at all.

Thanks for the compliment OT, but I didn’t do as good a job as I might have because my daughter is fine*. I think I might have given the impression she has Down’s syndrome, maybe? The test was purely precautionary because Ms. Fishy and I were a little late coming to parenthood.

Anyway, enjoy your weekend. It’s a long one here which means this retail monkey doesn’t get a day off for to weeks.

*Well, she does have to put up with a father who’s intent on fulfilling every stereotype regarding bad “Dad jokes” and who considers an eye roll a sign of complete success.

What does the Horde think a society absent rape culture would look like? I’ve begun developing a fantasy setting and the protagonist is going to be from such a society so that she can recognize and remark on the differences she sees in other cultures. As I work on it, though, I realize just how absolutely insidious it is.

To start with, prizing or admiring chastity has to be right out. Encouraging men to define their manhood by their ability to “win” sex can’t happen either. If people want to have sex–or don’t want to have sex–is irrelevant to anyone except their potential partners. Interest in engaging in sex is established clearly and openly. No one would ever assume clothing or flirtatious behavior were the same as consent. There is actually not even a nudity taboo, so that when the weather is hot it’s common for people of all genders to strip partially or fully while working. There are forms of cheap and readily available contraception (special yams which can be eaten by either partner to prevent pregnancy) and children born without the parents being married are simply a part of life. Child abuse and neglect–including a father not helping to support his children–are treated as serious crimes.

Any other suggestions? Or huge problems you think I might run into?

FTR, this is not a utopia. There are issues with racial bigotry and land disputes, but rape should be about as foreign, pointless and disturbing to their eyes as eating another person’s brain.

How do you plan to deal with marriage? Considering that it started out as transfer of ownership of women (or young girls) from father to husband.

Is marriage a social contract between two (or more?) adults, that makes it easier for them to share finances and property, as well as establish a connecting that makes things easier in cases of illness or child custody and so on.. or something else? Does it need to have a sexual or romantic aspect, or can two friends enter it because of the privileges I mentioned above?

Not sure if that is directly connected to eliminating rape culture, but it is related to sexism and established notions about relationships.

Some questions about this culture that come to mind after reading your description:

-How does this culture deal with partner violence? And I would also include one of the partners lying about eating the yams in order to force a pregnancy. Are there sexually-transmitted diseases in this culture? Do the yams help with that, or do other precautions need to be taken?

-How does this culture handle the issue of abortion?

-How does this culture handle a spectrum of sexuality?

-Are there issues with over- or under-population due to the lack of pressure to have/not to reproduce?

-In our culture, the intersection of rape culture and cultural racism is incredibly significant, in that women of color are already de-valued and therefore “unrapeable.” How does this manifest itself in your fictional culture? Are there issues with the disabled or mentally ill members of your culture also being considered to be of lesser value?

-Is there religion in your culture? What kinds of problems has it caused? Is it the source of the racism and land disputes a result of religion or colonialism or both?

One thing that I think you need to particularly keep in mind is in a science fiction or fantasy setting, a culture that lacks nudity taboos or conservative sexual “morals” is problematic when written from the male gaze. Many of the examples I’ve seen of it usually come off as an excuse for the author to send out a free love message, ostensibly in a “sex positive” way, but really in a “there are a lot of uptight bitches who refuse to fuck me and my fans” kind of way.

Mellow Monkey
Ursula K. LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness? There’s a lot of religion in it, but it’s the opposite of what you’re writing – a person from a gendered society living within a non-gendered one (or less-gendered). Might have some good insight. Don’t know about any of her other books, I don’t remember – LHoD is the only one of her gender novels I’ve read repeatedly and repeatedly. (The other book of hers is Lathe of Heaven, but that’s a whole other topic.)

Moment of Mormon Madness: back in the day, some Utah mormons paid their tithe to the LDS church with slaves.

Sep 7,1859 – Salt Lake City clerk records sale of twenty six year old “negro boy” for $800 to William H. Hooper. Until federal law ends slavery in U.S. Territories in 1862, some African-American slaves are paid as tithing, bought, sold and otherwise treated as chattel in Utah. http://www.i4m.com/think/history/mormon_history.htm

Oct 20, 1903
Death of Green Flake, African-American slave who drove Brigham Young into the Salt Lake Valley on Jul 24, 1847. Green was owned by Mormon James M. Flake who lent him along with a wagon and two mules to the Church for the 1847 trek west. Upon the death of James M. Flake in 1850 his widow moved to California, a free state, but before leaving gave her “Negro slave Green Flake” to the Church as tithing. Green worked two years for Brigham Young and for Heber C. Kimball, and was then granted his freedom. After his wife’s death he moved to Idaho. He returned to Salt Lake in 1897 to attend the 50th anniversary “jubilee” celebration of the arrival of the pioneers, where he received a certificate honoring him as a surviving member of the Brigham Young pioneer company. He is one of three slaves listed on the plaque on the Brigham Young monument in downtown Salt Lake City under the category of “Colored Servants.”http://lds-church-history.blogspot.com/2010/12/lds-tithing-history-oct-20-1903.html

As many ex-mormons have noted, current mormons are often taught that early mormons were abolitionists. sounds good, but isn’t true. Here is an image showing what early mormons published to make it clear that they were not abolitionists: http://www.utlm.org/images/curseofcain/curseofcain_p15.gif

For-profit colleges have been caught doing all kinds of bad shit, targeting military personnel, promoting false post-graduation job statistics, etc. I hadn’t realized before that they are also targeting black students and poverty-stricken students of all races. It figures though that whatever ripoff is taking place, black and poor people will be disproportionately ripped off.

…“There is no surer path to success in the middle class than a good education,” the president [President Obama] declared in his much-discussed speech on the roots of gun violence in black Chicago.

…Between 2004 and 2010, black enrollment in for-profit bachelor’s programs grew by a whopping 264 percent, compared to a 24 percent increase in black enrollment in public four-year programs. The two top producers of black baccalaureates in the class of 2011 were University of Phoenix and Ashford University, both for-profits.

These numbers mirror a simultaneous trend in eroding security among ambitious black Americans with shrinking access to middle-class jobs. It’s true that the country’s middle class is collapsing for everyone, but that trend is most profound among African-Americans. In 2008, as black folks flocked into higher ed, the Economic Policy Institute found that 45 percent of African-Americans born into the middle class were living at or near poverty as adults.

For too many, school has greased the downward slide. Nearly every single graduate of a for-profit school — 96 percent, according to a 2008 Department of Education survey — leaves with debt. The industry ate 25 percent of federal student aid in the 2009–2010 school year. That’s debt its students can’t pay. The loan default rate among for-profit college students is more than double that of their peers in both public and nonprofit private schools, because the degrees and certificates the students are earning are trap doors to more poverty, not springboards to prosperity….

…it is that very effort at self-improvement, that same American spirit of personal re-creation and against-all-odds ambition that has so often led black people into the jaws of the 21st century’s most predatory capitalists. From subprime credit cards through to subprime home loans and now on into subprime education, …

Beatrice, great question. They do have something like marriage, as a contract for sharing finances and property. There’s nothing necessarily sexual or romantic in it, but it’s common for people who have decided to live together romantically to form such a contract to make their lives easier. Custody of children and inheritance is handled matrilineally when there is no official claim, with anyone who might be the biological father expected to assist as xe can. An official claim from chosen parents can absolve them of this obligation, including cases of adoption or same sex parents.

No paternity tests, so parenthood tends to be a more flexible idea, but they do have magic for truth-saying. So, for example, if a man claimed he couldn’t possibly be the father and was found to be lying, he’d be seen very negatively for his neglect. When there are official claims by chosen parents, children will inherit from both.

mythbri

How does this culture deal with partner violence? And I would also include one of the partners lying about eating the yams in order to force a pregnancy. Are there sexually-transmitted diseases in this culture? Do the yams help with that, or do other precautions need to be taken?

Partner violence is seen as a serious offense. Your partner isn’t property, so anything denying their bodily autonomy or harming them is anathema. Lying to force a pregnancy would probably be treated on par with rape (and the lying could be confirmed: see above), but usually anyone who is a sexually active adult and doesn’t want children eats the yam, so it would take a lot of subterfuge to do. The contraception is too deeply entrenched in everyday life.

There are sexually transmitted diseases, with lots of herbal remedies that don’t do much good, rare magic that does work, and condoms made from sheep intestines that can be used. If someone knows xe has a disease and doesn’t warn xir partners, this is seen as a form of assault. The expected response is to warn, use the condoms, or seek out the rare healing.

How does this culture handle the issue of abortion?

It’s accepted and easily obtained, especially since the herbal remedies do a damn finer job on this issue than with the STDs.

How does this culture handle a spectrum of sexuality?

Gender and sexuality variants are accepted. They actually don’t have sexually gendered pronouns in their language (pronouns split between people and animals versus inanimate objects, plants, ideas, etc), either. Somewhat similar to Anishinaabemowin. What constitutes sex is pretty broad because of this acceptance, though a difference between reproductive versus non-reproductive sex acts is noted just because of the chance of pregnancy.

Are there issues with over- or under-population due to the lack of pressure to have/not to reproduce?

There are some issues with underpopulation for those who don’t live on the land, since there is a lack of pressure. They’re a largely agrarian society, though, so farmers will see it as a good investment to have or adopt children to ensure the work will continue being done. This often leads to population shifts, where the population drops in the cities and then is replenished by young adults leaving the farmlands.

In our culture, the intersection of rape culture and cultural racism is incredibly significant, in that women of color are already de-valued and therefore “unrapeable.” How does this manifest itself in your fictional culture? Are there issues with the disabled or mentally ill members of your culture also being considered to be of lesser value?

It gets complex. The dominant culture in this society regularly comes into contact with other non-magical humans of a variety of racial backgrounds. From the side of my protagonist’s culture, there’s wariness, xenophobia and a strong sense superiority. From the other side, my protagonist’s culture is largely seen as being populated by unrapeable sluts. My protagonist’s culture tends towards isolationism because of this, with vague stories about how people in other lands do terrible things.

On the other hand, there is a purely fantasy race that shape-shifts, with each tribe becoming a different animal. Some of these are accepted in my protagonist’s culture (the wolves, primarily), while others are actively hunted and hated (the swine, who are pretty patriarchal). The men of the swine tribe often engage in raiding on villages and are normally the targets of the counter-raids, but there have been incidents of people going after the women of that tribe with genocidal ideas about stopping the next generation.

What race they are (non-magical human versus the shape-shifters) depends entirely on the mother because magic, and so this has had an influence on how they see the women of the shape-shifters.

Re: the disabled and mentally ill. There is a strong protective ethic toward anyone seen as vulnerable.

Is there religion in your culture? What kinds of problems has it caused? Is it the source of the racism and land disputes a result of religion or colonialism or both?

There are many different religions. The shape-shifters are monotheists, worshipping a deity associated with the mutability of the body and identity. To them, gender nonconforming individuals and those with intersex conditions are seen as especially holy.

The other non-magical human ethnic groups all have their own gods, with two groups essentially worshipping the same god and yet hating one another for doing it incorrectly. The polytheists tend to be more tolerant and fluid in their beliefs.

My protagonist’s culture is polytheistic and adopts the gods of others pretty liberally, but primarily worships a god/goddess pair of fertility/harvest gods. Many of the problems they have today are the result of the earlier forms of worship, in which they would capture people from other countries or the local swine shape-shifters to sacrifice them to their gods. Human sacrifice has waned and is publicly disapproved of now, but some of the more outlying villages still secretly practice it. Unsurprisingly, these are the ones most commonly attacked by the swine shifter raiders.

The protagonist’s people were the first people in their region (the shifters actually came later), so problems on their end aren’t really the result of colonialism. Eventually, a king is going to take control and attempt to “improve” and “modernise” the land by attempting to mimic the surrounding cultures.

One thing that I think you need to particularly keep in mind is in a science fiction or fantasy setting, a culture that lacks nudity taboos or conservative sexual “morals” is problematic when written from the male gaze.

And that is not something I want to do. Of the most important characters so far, three are women and one is genderqueer. The protagonist is a teenager who hasn’t had sex and isn’t about to start with people outside her own culture, who she feels have disturbing ideas about it. One is celibate by choice, having a loving and non-sexual relationship with a male partner. The third has a monogamous sexual partnership with a man and she’s attempting to get pregnant, but they don’t have any official contract between them. The genderqueer character is part of a triad with two men who were together first. I’d like to get some good lesbian characters in here somewhere as well, but haven’t figured it out yet. I don’t want it to be shoe-horned in, after all.

“Free love” certainly happens, but it’s not an ideal or expected of anyone.

The dominant culture in this society regularly comes into contact with other non-magical humans of a variety of racial backgrounds. … My protagonist’s culture tends towards isolationism because of this, with vague stories about how people in other lands do terrible things.

They come in contact with them due to shipping, trade, immigration, etc, and physical differences are accepted with little note. It’s if they express cultural differences that are unacceptable to the locals that they get ostracised, and any attempts at actually moving outside culture within their land are opposed.

Mellow Monkey
Also, on second salad-making thought, her novel The Dispossessed might have some insight. I seem to recall it was more capitalism vs. communism, but with the idea that in capitalism, even things like gender become a competition to get to the top (or something).
And I like your description so far!

Mellow Monkey:
I like your idea, but being so caught up within our society, it is hard for me to envision a culture without it.
It does make me wonder about our world.

Without rape culture what would our world look like?

What type of government would exist?
What advances could be made in mental healthcare?
What would tv ads look like?
Music video depictions of women as sex objects would be nonexistent. What would a music video in this world look like?
Would churches even survive? I wonder if some aspect of normalizing rape comes from the treatment of women in the bible.
With half the species not being devalued and dehumanized for their gender, what advancements could be made in quality of life? What new inventions would be made? Cures for diseases? Would poverty be a significant problem?
Looking at how interlocked various forms of oppression are, how would the absence of rape culture affect racism? Ableism?
Would the greater empathy of our species extend to other living creatures?

Damn, the ripple effects would run far and deep.
****

I was turning into the parking lot at work the other day when a truck abruptly pulled out of its parking space. Thankfully I wasn’t going too fast, but it was still jarring. My immediate reaction was “geez lady, be more careful”
Then I caught myself.
I never had a good look at the driver. Why did I assume the driver was a women? Subconscious sexism? Had I made that kneejerk assumption because of some “men are more rational and logical, when are more emotional and illogical” sexist trope?
Then I wondered how often small manifestations of sexist thoughts occur in a given day and how the heck you could even try to track that.

Portia:
It could be either, but if you take it in, usually they can determine which fairly quick. When mine was screwing up months ago, they put in a new battery and quickly found out it was the phone.

I know this is an utopian idea and all that, but I find it pretty horrible. Just look at the similarity that John pointed out, it says enough, really.
I’d say I wish that child would grow up to spit in the face of her “groomers”, but she would be too brain washed to do it.
You would be taking any sort of choice from someone, in order to shape them into what you deem good. I don’t care whether that would save the whole fucking world, if it’s done on the back of a child who didn’t have any sort of choice in it.

Besides, who would groom that child? Who would shape that child into the savior that you are dreaming about? How would you choose people good enough for such a task?
In the end you would end up with a bunch of people pulling strings of this woman. You might as well have them ruling directly, instead of destroying a person so as to shape her into a puppet.

Meh, not really. The idea is to school these girls (and for there to be scores of them) in a super education geared towards political rule. If you have scores of girls schooled this way in what ostensibly looks merely to be, on the outside, some special form of education, they aren’t being “groomed” coercively at all; which is to say only a very few of them at the time of selection would be given the choice to become Queen, and if they turned it down they wouldn’t necessarily connect their education to being given the choice, and the “grooming” would merely be rigorous preparation that would serve them well in life and enable access to the best universities. Hardly “coercion” of any sort in fact.

The goal above all else is to avoid trauma in this system, so if trauma is being avoided and there are scores of such people in a general but very advanced educational system designed specifically for them, and society is kept in the dark about this (classified, like I said) there is no “coercion” in the slightest. Because there is no “expectation” that any one of them or even any group of them would become the Queen or choose to do so.

It’s a general field, a general thing based on empathy testing. As far as the comparison to the Dalai Llama that is more about belief than anything else: as far as I know no Dalai Llama are given extensive empathy testing. Training, sure, but not testing, plus their whole society expects them to rule, which indicates a non-classified form of education and training and general expectations. As well they generally tend to single out just one for the job and put a lot of pressure on him. In my system, there is no pressure and no one even knows what they’re being trained for. In fact, on the outside it would look like they were getting a PH.D in political science by the time they were 12 or 13 or something, like going to Harvard, etc and getting advanced training. As well their parents could opt out of the process for their children at any point in time (indeed they would be consulted for the process in the first place) if they thought it was a harm to their child.

That’s a vast difference between what you’ve painted it out to be. Quite stark I think. The child isn’t a savior, the child is a ruler, there’s a big difference. The child would have no spiritual significance in the slightest.

What Beatrice said. The moment you’re taking choices away from someone, the resulting world is not as perfect as you would want it to be. What if none of those children being groomed actually want to be Queen? What if all of them hate their lives because of this one Purpose someone else has given them? Not a happy place at all. (And what do you do with the leftovers?)

And as I’ve explained above, to Beatrice, they’re not going to hate their lives because of any “One Purpose” because, as far as they know, they just received a special education and nothing more. Also, statistically, it will be determined how many young girls are trained in this general special education and testing, the true purpose of which only their parents know of, in order to yield a statistical sample wherein with it could be guaranteed that at least one of them would choose the job simply due to feeling capable enough for it. As I explained to Beatrice, there is no societal pressure on them because it’s classifed no one knows what the special education is for, except the parents, whom can take the child out of education at any point in time if they think the child would be hurt. Even then, the parents would be given a vague and general idea of what it was for, and told the child would be removed from the program for it’s own safety and wellbeing if the parents pressured it unduly to excel in her studies.

The focus is on preventing trauma, safety in education, and selection criteria that are extremely high. Coercion is nowhere to be found. The child can goto another school in fact, if it really insists, but this school, this school will have perks: reasons the child would want to stay. It would be top of it’s class such that most of the kids wouldn’t want to leave because it would be superior to every other school in every way in such a manner that was absurdly obvious. This would be accomplished through generous government funding of the school.

That still doesn’t sound appealing at all. It would just create another kind of elite, with their special schools and good education unavailable to those that didn’t test well when they were little (I don’t have to guess whether you take a side in the nature vs nurture debate).
I’m starting to seriously argue about a political system that doesn’t exist, so I’ll bow out now.

That still doesn’t sound appealing at all. It would just create another kind of elite, with their special schools and good education unavailable to those that didn’t test well when they were little (I don’t have to guess whether you take a side in the nature vs nurture debate).

No it doesn’t just create “another kind of elite”, it creates an elite qualified through science, to rule by the time they are adults. The difference between that and current elites is seemingly infinite. As far as good education unavailable to those that didn’t test well, it’s not either or, you’re just making it out to be that way because it suits your mischaracterizations of my argument and system.

I’m starting to seriously argue about a political system that doesn’t exist, so I’ll bow out now.

I should think so, as it’s certainly better to bow out rather than continue to mischaracterize my positions blatantly, insinuating all sorts of horribly insulting things about me that I never implied. Especially given I myself come from a Monarchist background wherein I received extensive and brutal trauma, this is merely insult to injury. I should think you would bow out, as your commentary is a disgrace.

Tony: Yeah, the ripple effect is vast on this. It’s why getting asked questions and having to justify the culture and think about the consequences is really helpful to me. Every time I start figuring out one little part of the setting, I realize how it leads off into five different directions.

For example: If there isn’t an emphasis on women being weak, submissive keepers of sex, then what impact does that have on what people are physically attracted to in women?

I should think so, as it’s certainly better to bow out rather than continue to mischaracterize my positions blatantly, insinuating all sorts of horribly insulting things about me that I never implied.[…]I should think you would bow out, as your commentary is a disgrace.

Please be kind in the Lounge. There is another thread, the Thunderdome, without those requirements if you want to have a no-hold-barred debate.

Please be kind in the Lounge. There is another thread, the Thunderdome, without those requirements if you want to have a no-hold-barred debate.

I was on the receiving end of transphobic cruelty, whereby I was made out to be a victimizer when I myself have received trauma from a Monarchist background. I respond to cruelty with unkindness. If you have a problem with that, you’re just another transphobe.

Transphobes like you can never acknowledge the trauma I and other transpeople go through, even if it’s brutal Monarchist trauma. You can only sit and snipe and accuse us of evil we’ve not committed.

Her characterizations were most certainly insinuating things I never implied in anything I said, and blatantly so even.

I think if I was trying to write a “wanna have sex?” scene in a culture that didn’t tend to normalize rape, I might first try writing a man propositioning a man scene or a woman propositioning a woman scene just to start off on an egalitiarian footing and to be thinking a little outside our culture’s deeply ingrained cliches. For me (straight woman), that would loosen up my thinking, even if the scene I ultimately wanted to write was woman with man.

(And if I’m being offensive and othering here, please let me know. I realize I have a hetero-normative lens.)

Portia
Splendid. Forum meeting from a fantasy forum I’ve been a member for 11 years now, so I know quite a lot of those people for not much shorter than that. Just me and my friends, no kids :)
You know, it’s always nice to be amongst people who will understand your obscure references and who can empathize because your virtual pets aren’t behaving well ;)
And now I need a bed
See you all tomorrow

(The other book of hers is Lathe of Heaven, but that’s a whole other topic.)

And a totally awesome book.
–

Why did I assume the driver was a women? Subconscious sexism? Had I made that kneejerk assumption because of some “men are more rational and logical, when are more emotional and illogical” sexist trope?

Or simply all of the jokes about “women drivers” that rest on a foundation of stereotypes—fluff-for-brains, can’t-pay-attention, probably-checking-her-make-up stuff.*shrug*
It all comes from the same well.
–*pouncehug* for Giliell.
Of course we missed you!
:)
–

What the fuck just happened here?

I…think that sleepingwytch just mistook Portia for a transphobe, based on her (Portia’s) reaction (reminder of Rules and Customs of the [Lounge]) in response to sleepingwytch’s interpretation of Beatrice’s & rq’s interpretations of her (sleepingwytch’s) Proposal for Obtaining Perfect Government. From there, sleepingwytch quickly jumped to the conclusion that we are all(“I’m done here, fuck all of you complicit transphobes.”) complicit transphobes, here, I’m not sure why (inside six minutes, with no further topic-related input), and seems to have flounced.

I…think that sleepingwytch just mistook Portia for a transphobe, based on her (Portia’s) reaction (reminder of Rules and Customs of the [Lounge]) in response to sleepingwytch’s interpretation of Beatrice’s & rq’s interpretations of her (sleepingwytch’s) Proposal for Obtaining Perfect Government. From there, sleepingwytch quickly jumped to the conclusion that we are all (“I’m done here, fuck all of you complicit transphobes.”) complicit transphobes, here, I’m not sure why (inside six minutes, with no further topic-related input), and seems to have flounced.

I am puzzlement.

For whatever reason, sleepingwytch seems to feel that she’s entitled to post whatever she wants here and that any criticism whatsoever is an attack, if not an outright violation, because of who she is and what’s been done to her. I hope she will at some point grow beyond this.

That was strange. Expecting someone to respect the rules of a community makes one transphobic?

=========

Boy decided he needed to get a knife for work. He works as a busboy and lunch runner for a Sunday brunch buffet and often finds himself chopping veggies for salads and such. However, chefs tend to be, shall we say, protective of their blades. So he picked up a very nice forged Santoku (Calphalon brand, no idea the actual maker) for about $10.00 at Marshalls or TJMaxx (great places to find discount cooking shit). And I just ordered him a knife safe so he can carry it to and from work safely (and store it at work).

Things are quiet at chez Ogvorbis.

Boy is listening to Queen while browsing Lego creations on line. Wife is relaxing and reading one of her books. I found THIS! on Amazon and I am seriously considering getting it with the holiday pay coming on Tuesday. Now Boy is listening to Herman’s Hermits playing a World War I dance hall ditty — “I’m ‘enry the Eigth I am!” Right. The pipe. I figure a stem that long should really cut down much of the harshness I experience when I smoke a pipe (the tobacco doesn’t matter — I’m just really lazy about cleaning my pipes out so the weird shit builds up (get your mind out of the gutter!)).

For dinner, I tried something new. For the first time I grilled some port marinated in Speidie Sauce — an oil and vinegar concoction that is really good. Served it with some everything bagels (they must have swept up the floor) and green beans sauted in olive oil with some shallots, leeks, onions and scallions. Quite good.

I appear to have come back up from my latest round of depression. My only dream last night involved arguing with an Austrian palaeontologist about the his theory that the plates of stegosaurs were covered with feathers. Weird dream but much better than the ones I have been having.

I read your dinner description twice and am trying to figure out if port is a kind of fish I’m not aware of or if you put port wine in the marinade.

—

I ran in my new running shoes for the second time. My left arch still sort of aches after about 20 minutes of running or walking. Sigh. But the evening is lovely, overcast, between rainshowers, and the river is like glass, reflecting a bit of a break in the clouds on the horizon.

Oh, and dreams. I had another dream where I was pregnant and happy about it. As usual, my conscious mind (I felt as if I were watching myself be happy and pregnant) was yelling “You are not happy about this! Get unpregnant immediately!”

I thought that the increased UV radiation caused by the damaged ozone layer was doing severe damage to the eyes of the Mexican Staring Frog. Sad, really. Yet another species we have to keep our eye on.

Train personnel in Sweden are not alowed to wear shorts, regardless of the heat. So some (men) have started wearing skirts.

+ 1

Is it really?

In my very limited experience, it looks a lot like anxiety makes people go “what if [worst-case scenario]? Oh crap, [worst-case scenario]! *panic*”. I’ve also observed this in my nightmares, where worst-case scenarios happen in front of my eyes when I imagine them because that’s how dreams work.

I’ll read the paper “tomorrow” (crap, it’s stupidly late again).

*hugs* in *chocolate* for David.

*noms chocolate*
*finds hugs in chocolate*
*is happy* ^_^

I respond to cruelty with unkindness.

…That… doesn’t… somehow logically follow from having been through horrible shit.

sleepingwytch, please consider how you’ve received support and sympathy and good wishes (and a lot of cyber-hugs from those who do that) for your personal situation, in the full knowledge you’re a transperson.

I understand that your personal history is intimately tied to your thinking on the subject, but I tell you it’s not the case that the criticism here of your political ideas is likewise.

I’m sorry to see you’ve been triggered, but I tell you that I think you’ve made a false positive determination when you perceive transphobia from people such as Portia or Beatrice.

My computer is going batty. My knee hurts. I am tired (I was tired yesterday so should I count myself as retired today?). I am heading off to bed to read one of the books I remember fondly from high school — Alan Dean Foster’s Spellsinger series. Very dated but fun and nostalgic.

Considering that it started out as transfer of ownership of women (or young girls) from father to husband.

Not necessarily. Always, of course, among the aristocracy and others with property and the literate. But for ordinary people it’s probably a matter of where in Europe which particular local “old” traditions persisted. For many in Britain, marriage was a private matter dealt with by a verbal contract, involving no one else at all, not even a priest. (It took the church centuries to get control of marriage, because most people thought it was none of their business.) And parents or other family who might have controlled or dictated a marriage were generally unavailable for rural workers who’d had to move away from home for work in the first place, and were illiterate (and there was no postal service anyway) so they couldn’t keep in contact with family.

Last night I dreamt that I was the token hetero on a team of gay superheros. I felt uncomfortable and out of place, not because of any sexytimes incompatibility, but because I didn’t know what I was doing. They were all saving the world and I was just standing around. It didn’t help when one of them said to me with just a little contempt “Are those your reading glasses?” and they were.

John, when your choices for dinner is frozen salmon, dried salmon or smoked salmon aged in barrels of seal oil, stink heads are nice for the changeup. Although smoked salmon aged in barrels of seal oil is still my favorite seafood of all time.

Right. Am now on exam leave, so can converse more regularly in between papers. Have just had some excellent leftover salmon for lunch and I now understand Euler’s beam Theory. I am disturbingly happy.

Am now eating crumpets with a liberal application of lemon curd, and laughing at people who are calling me a Bourgeois reductionist because I said that subordinating science to marxist political ideals would fail – see Lysenko.

PraiseMoves… how does this work? I mean… I’m just incapable of comprehending why anyone would even bother.

I’m cat-sitting over the weekend. For my parents. And Gracie is not happy that her humans have gone. She spent yesterday looking for them. Today was less with the looking and more with the moping. There will, most likely, be epic levels of sulk-age Monday evening upon their return.

Oh, I feel for her too — but I can’t make her understand that they’re only gone temporarily, and that they’ll be back on Monday. I love her to death, she’s my baby girl, but sometimes she’s a complete brat. >.<

dongiovanni
I know someone who got tired of salmon… because he spent about 14 years in Siberia, nearly starving, eating it raw just to survive, in one of those Soviet labour camps. When he got back, he never ate it again.

Ogvorbis
*hugs* for you, and just watch out that pipe don’t make you look like a hobbit… Do you have furry feet?

+++

It was a Big Night last night.
The bedroom once again belongs to the Parents – Youngest (Last?) got moved out into his brothers’ room (by virtue of having achieved One Year of age last week)! *happydance* And everyone slept unexpectedly well.

Well, yes, that would do it. My apologies for insensitive comments – I was referring to the situation where one exists in a fairly comfortable environment and is not trying desperately to survive in a labour camp.

One of my grandparents was interned in a labour camp for six years when he was a child, so I’m not entirely ignorant of the situation – largely but not entirely. I’m a bit stronger on 1960’s – 80’s era communist repression, largely as most of my family were alive during that era and I seem to have inherited some of their neuroses. On the other hand, at least in Poland that era was lunatic enough that you could laugh at it, which you couldn’t really do with Stalin’s repression.

@WMDkitty – well, I hope she calms down a bit. Have you tried feeding her bacon or fish? That usually helps.

My grandmother had a similar reason for disliking any kind of fish – the story just differs a bit on whether she was fed fish oil or fish soup every day as a child in the camp (I don’t think she was there for very long, but she never talked about it, so I’ve just heard stories).

True that. Now I just need to get enough people like you in touch with the posturing communists at my university. I just don’t get how they can talk to people who are living with the effects of this failed social experiment and then tell me to my face that Lenin was a wonderful man and that the sun shines out of his anus. (sorry – my family is once again in the middle of a feud with a flat full of philosophy students high on their overinflated egos and I’m a little irritated – hence yesterday’s positivist slur).

My grandfather was on turnip soup and bread from memory. He didn’t develop any food related dislikes from memory, but he definitely was averse to what he called “foreign muck”> His idea of a good meal was pork, potatoes and beans.

I had to bust out the treats AND the ‘nip to get her fuzzy ass inside tonight.

I’ve created a monster — she tries to steal Willie’s ‘nip! (He’s the cat next door.)

She’s pretty content right now. Wants me to play with her, which is irritating — she has a number of toys, both improvised and store-bought, that are perfectly good for independent play! Not to mention the paper grocery bag in the kitchen! Or the string on the doorknob! Serves me right for getting her high…

So the issue of daughter going to the Dr’s is definitely off the cards. I raised it again in as a tangential gentle way as I could and by saying that it would help me not worry so much. And got told in no uncertain terms that she had “far too much other shit and commitments and things going on, to go to the Dr!”

So I guess it really is gonna be about time and being there and supporting. She needs to be in control of at least this part of her life at the moment I guess. Suppressing (or is that managing or something?) the HUGE parental urge to ‘help’ and ‘make better’ and ‘look after’ is such a struggle at the moment.

Also remembering a thing I have often seen written here – “its the depression talking!” She can sure say some hurtful angry things. And remembering ‘in the moment’ that this is not my daughter talking and not being reactive is hard. She actually apologised after one particular outburst – which I thought was rather amazing actually! Shes’ still ‘in’ there somewhere. I said its ok hun, not your fault – but maybe better to just have said – ‘Thanks’ I dunno? This constant second guessing my self is a drag and tiring. I think its about somehow finding some way to have distance between us – without actually being distant.

She goes to the gynecologist later this month as she has not menstruated since she was sick. She is terrified of being told that her uterus is broken and she can’t have babies. That would devastate her. No-one seems to know about how vasculitis might affect the reproductive organs. She’s got a lot on her plate, has my lovely girlio. :-(

dongiovanni
Dealing with the Communists? Ugh. I have no idea, really. I’ve always wanted to meet one and ask them if they really think the system will work the second time around (or n time around, considering China, Cuba, etc.). Years ago one of these communists from a group ‘affiliated’ with the revolution of 1917 (and by ‘affiliated’, I mean that they were named after it and carried posters and fliers about it around to prove that it brought in a better regime – well, except for all that shooting-the-aristocracy part, but you know…) came up to me but I didn’t have the brains then to start asking questions. The ones I have on my list are:
1) Do you really think the system would work better this time?
2) Why do you think it would work better?
3) How do you prevent corruption/the ‘wrong’ person taking power?
4) How will you distribute everything?
5) No, really, how will you distribute everything?
6) Who’s going to keep an eye on the rulers/the law?

Sometimes, even though they profess communism, a lot of their elements seem similar to those of libertarianism (in some ways… such as some of them (communists) believe that the people will police themselves by keeping an eye on each other and reporting wrong-doing, but how to prevent false accusations, nobody knows – it’s that element of ‘if everyone made their own choices’ that I find in common with the libertarians… however, communists will do it ‘for the good of the group/people’, while libertarians just do it for themselves). [This is badly explained by me, but I swear I have a point under all that.]
I’m all for a form of socialism with a grand dose of democracy, but I just don’t see how communism – in its ideal, perfect state – would actually be workable, considering the fallibility of human nature. And considering past results. Bad experiment, that one. :(

My grandma hates pea soup because of the German DP camp. It varied from location to location, I know other elderly Latvians in the Americas who have issue with corn for the same reason. Apparently rations were bland and monotonous, who’d’ve thought?

Every time I write here – I end up in a blithering mess. Maybe its not such a good idea…?

BTW …don’t have the ‘spoons’ to get into the conversation right now… – but my Dad was a life long communist – the reason I am an atheist. He was a good man.
Not a big deal – just had to get it said. Spent most of my childhood/adolescence having to ‘defend’ against the communists=all things evil, thing.

billingtondev
Maybe you need to get the blithering out in order to feel more patient and understanding? It needs out somewhere, best here rather than at your daughter herself.
Massive *hugs* for you, if you want. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be. :(

And I don’t believe that communists are all things evil. I just don’t think it’s a way of organizing society that works. Then again, I’m basing this on its major fails in the past, plus I know I’m biased due to actual personal influence on me, my current environment, my environment growing up, various relations, etc. I have issues with its implementation rather than the idea itself. The people who are communists at heart, and who try to live by its principles, are, for the most part, extremely decent and kind people who truly believe that more equality is needed, and they actually pay attention to social justice issues.
When communism is implemented, however, there’s often no guide to dealing with the diversity-and-choice principle, since it tends towards the same-ifying of everything and everyone for the sake of simplicity. That just doesn’t seem to work in real life.
So, tl;dr – I would differentiate between people communists and official entities (governments) communists.
Sometimes amazing things on a small scale disintegrate when they get too large and too susceptible to corruption.

(Because that whole shoot/deport/torture those who disagree thing kind of throws a wrench into the perfection of a system that’s supposed to help everyone succeed. And yeah, I know, one can argue that later communism isn’t really communism in the true sense of the word, and that only Lenin had it right but the wrong people took over because they lied about being better communists, etc. Sounds like a familiar argument. This is with regards to government-communism, not people-communism.)

billingtondev and dongiovanni have similar gravatars. That was confusing (dongiovanni’s daughter – doctor – what?)

dongiovanni,
Sometime in the early 40’s. I’m not sure how long they were in a camp, I think it was longer that they were “just” under complete German control – food rations (including in school), and all.

billingtondev,
Uh, I lash out too. If she feels like I do, then sometimes it just makes you so angry, that everything sucks, you know? And then some little insignificant thing sends you in a rage. I try to rein it in, and if I can’t, apologize, but I know it’s hurting my mum and I understand her behavior is hurting you. I’m sorry :(

Maybe you need to get the blithering out in order to feel more patient and understanding? It needs out somewhere, best here rather than at your daughter herself.
Massive *hugs* for you, if you want. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be. :(

Thankyou! Yes maybe that’s true. I think I’m pretty understanding – unless you noticed something…? But mostly what I feel is just kinda scared and helpless…

and:

And I don’t believe that communists are all things evil. I just don’t think it’s a way of organizing society that works. Then again, I’m basing this on its major fails in the past, plus I know I’m biased due to actual personal influence on me, my current environment, my environment growing up, various relations, etc. I have issues with its implementation rather than the idea itself. The people who are communists at heart, and who try to live by its principles, are, for the most part, extremely decent and kind people who truly believe that more equality is needed, and they actually pay attention to social justice issues.

I understand. Just a trigger thing for me – and maybe I am a touch over sensitive at the mo :-) Not a big deal – and an important conversation to have.
(fingers crossed for blockquote success…)

@ Beatrice
re the gravatars: Oh yes! they are similar. That’s annoying. I don’t think I can change it tho – can I?

And yeah – ‘everything sucks’ is exactly what it is for her. It sucks so bad that it all feels so sucky for her. And me being ‘hurt’ is not really the thing. I’ll cope with that – its just about remembering ‘in the moment’ and not reacting. I guess practice will make better uh?

I have many problems with implementation of communism, but some of the ideals… I like those much more than the ideals of capitalism.
The fact is, we need another system, because capitalism isn’t working. I’m not optimistic enough to believe we’ll every have something completely fair and incorruptable, but something I would support would probably have more socialist and communist principles than capitalist.

You being hurt is a thing too! I’m just not sure how to advise you to bring it up with her, so that neither of you gets needlessly upset even more.
But I think you should tell her. In her pain, maybe she doesn’t even fully realize how she’s hurting you (maybe she does and feels guilty about it, but she could be so preoccupied with her own pain, she’s not evne considering that lashing out is hurting you).

Beatrice – I think somehow its all of those things. Part of her knows she’s hurting me, part of her feels guilty AND she is so preoccupied with her own pain that the lashing out happens anyway. It all feels so slippery and volatile. Moment to moment I don’t know what to expect. She probly doesn’t either. I will definitely think about telling her tho.
She has gone home to her own place tonight – and I’m glad of that. I do need the down time.

When I’m lashing out like that, at every. little. thing. it’s almost… it’s not “me” doing the lashing out, “I’m” in the background somewhere trying to make it stop while the fear, panic, and anger take control. Once all that “burns” itself out (doesn’t take long at all), I’m exhausted, and I feel like a right shit because that panicky state, if I’m verbal in that state, my mouth just runs and lots of mean words come out and I don’t mean a single one of them but I can’t stop them and you can’t un-say things so lots and lots of apologies are usually in order. And yes, it’s almost always some stupid, insignificant, wouldn’t-normally-react-to-this thing that sets me off because it’s just the last fucking straw that topples the delicately held together shit-tower that is my mental state.

…oh.

Ramble-y words.

Shutting up now.

Wait, one last thing!

I think all you can do right now is just… be there, and be consistent, because that one little point of stability, that one little bit of day-to-day “normalcy” can be a huge anchor (in a good way).

Sucky night. Normal dreams (scouts and 9/11 (but not combined (which is good))). Nothing new, just new details about specific incidents. One of the dreams was about the family that walked into our campsite out near Tusayan, giggle, apologized, and kept going. Just more details — the dream doesn’t actually provide new details, it just provides an address for where those memories were hidden once I wake up. Made for a long night.

And how could you possibly get tired of salmon?

When my dad was young (during WWII), his parents sent him off to spend summers in Maine with some distant relatives. They had lobster for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was the cheapest protein around (well, that and eggs (and (to this day) the thought of lobster omelette makes his stomach turn)). He and Mom are retired in Maine. He will eat about 2 or 3 lobsters a year. It took him almost a decade up in Maine before he finally decided to have one. He got sick of lobster.

One can get sick of anything. When I was at a fire in Montana last year we were on per diem. The four restaurants in town were all steak houses. I got mildly sick of steak. And it was good steak.

just watch out that pipe don’t make you look like a hobbit… Do you have furry feet?

A six foot tall hobbit? How many quaffs of Entdraft would that take? Yes, my feet are covered with curly hair. My toes are also curly. But I doubt anyone will mistake me for a hobbit. After all, they normally dress in earth tones.

Kind of ‘rupt, but *hugs* to Billingtondev, Ogvorbis and anyone else who needs/wants them.

rq

1) Do you really think the system would work better this time?
2) Why do you think it would work better?
3) How do you prevent corruption/the ‘wrong’ person taking power?
4) How will you distribute everything?
5) No, really, how will you distribute everything?
6) Who’s going to keep an eye on the rulers/the law?

Since you asked:
1)Because it will be implemented through peaceful democratic processes, rather than a violent revolution to install the fascisms in sheep’s clothing that are Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism.
2) See previous, with the not having a sociopathic dictator put in charge through violence, but instead a democratically elected government; there are plenty of examples of such with quite low corruption in the modern world, after all
3)By ensuring that no individual has very much power (ideally no individual would have power over any other, but there are practical problems with that when it comes to certain classes of intractable dispute).
4) Worker-owned cooperatives and independent individuals would make/do things, and members of other cooperatives would pay for those things (or not, in which case it would be advisable to start making.doing something else for a living). This exchange would be mediated via currency, because you can’t have a functioning large-scale economy, else.
5)No, really, that’s how. It actually works pretty well; see Mondragon in Spain and Emilia-Romagna in Italy.
6)Everyone; see #2.

communism works extremely well, until you get people involved. Greed and self interest always overcome ideology and laws

Except, you know, the examples of working economies based on worker cooperatives that I just mentioned above, and the democratic governments with next to no corruption problems found in parts of Northern Europe, Japan, and a few other places. And the fact that self-interest leads one to seek a prosperous, peaceful life, and that is most efficiently obtained by cooperation and equality. Except for all the ways that your statement is nonsense, you’re totally right, though.

True.
Which makes your statement effectively meaningless. Any system that has enough people involved, let alone whole governments and nations, is going to have defects. It’s just the question of how many, how severe and how manageable.

Dalillama’s example of workers’ cooperatives seems to be much more promising than senseless privatization driving whole economies into the hands of a couple of people.

645 Beatrice, my point was simply that the ideology of marx can never be truly tested so instead of communism “good” some of the ideas can be used from that ideology to make trade more equitable.

4) Worker-owned cooperatives and independent individuals would make/do things, and members of other cooperatives would pay for those things (or not, in which case it would be advisable to start making.doing something else for a living).

sounds fine until class rears its head, “we wont trade with them because” Co-operation works fine for the insiders, not so much for the outsiders. Examples of outsiders would be immigrant groups in Northern Europe, France etc.

I just don’t get how they can talk to people who are living with the effects of this failed social experiment and then tell me to my face that Lenin was a wonderful man and that the sun shines out of his anus.

Communisplaining? Commusplaining? Commiesplaining? Anyways, like all the other —splainings. Only with Communists.
–

A six foot tall hobbit?

Why not? If you can have a six foot tall dwarf, I see no reason to discriminate against hobbits.
We could call you Carrot.
Carrot Tallfellow.
ArkRanger of ‘Shrooms.
:)
–

My own vote isn’t yay!communism! either, but I do think that we can take some good ideas from it.

sounds fine until class rears its head, “we wont trade with them because” Co-operation works fine for the insiders, not so much for the outsiders. Examples of outsiders would be immigrant groups in Northern Europe, France etc.

That is not an argument against cooperatives, but argument against bigotry and xenofobia, since “we won’t trade with them because” is also used when it comes to private small companies run by immigrants, or you have “we won’t employ him/her because” when him/her is an immigrant… The problem is there, but I don’t see it as an argument against Dalillama’s proposition.
Yeah, there would be problems, but there already are problems for the same reasons. Shitty theory of economy isn’t the only problem, there is also social inequality, there is xenophobia, there is sexism… all of those require social change. It’s all intertwined, no matter which political of economical system we employ. Building a stable economy (partly) on cooperatives isn’t going to magic everything into being all right, but it is one of the steps.

Since I’m on the roll here, I’ll also add that I believe things that make the very basic infrastructure of any country, such as electricity, water, roads, gas, phone… should not be owned by private companies unless citizens or workers have the majority of shares, otherwise they should be owned by the government.

Oh, and I don’t consider myself a communist, if anyone was wondering.
—–

rq,
I would like to hear what you think about this conversation. Considering I am currently seeing consequences of mad privatization, farmers losing everything because each by him/herself is too small to fight for a little corner of the market, industry going to hell… maybe I’m too deeply steeped into all the negatives of a mad run towards capitalist heaven to grasp what makes you vary of anything resembling communist thought.

I mean, I realize communist regimes were horrible and I wouldn’t want to anything like that to happen again, but I am talking about taking some of the communist and socialist ideas and combining them with what we have now.

Beatrice
It’s ok, I have an answer in the ‘dome, where Dalillama continued the conversation.
I’ll probably have more, I’m between dressing the kids for bed and actually putting them there, so I’ll be back later. I’m interested in this conversation. No, I’m not bothered at all. :) It’s the kind of discussion I like, because anytime I try to say anything remotely positive about communism in Latvian society (where I find most intelligent people of my association), I get more or less eaten alive.
I’m not 100% for communism, but it has good ideas. I’m not 100% for capitalism, but it has some good ideas. I just want the world to work for everyone. And right now it doesn’t, and I wish I knew how to fix it. :/

So the first woman character in a video game at E3 is a sniper in a bikini who also happens to be mute. Yep, a woman who likes guns, shows side boob, and can’t talk. Sigh. Thanks so much to Metal Gear Solid and Konami for saving me money on their games. Double sigh.

That is exactly it! Ex.act.ly. That’s what happens.
I am so sorry this happens to you too. But its kinda reassuring to know that ‘this is how it goes’ for other people too – so, very good words – Thank you.
Being an anchor. Also yes. There’s nothing I can really ‘do’ is there? Just be here. And wait?

Man. Color me not impressed with Microsoft’s E3 conference.
No mention of the DRM issues, no mention of *any* of the shitstorm that surrounded the X1 reveal.
Also, $500 for a new console? And $70 games? Dude, seriously, for a system that claims to want to be in every living room, that’s a hell of a price barrier.

Sony, even with your no-women on stage back in January and Vita faux pas, please, please, bring us a real console at a not-insane price.

Going to bed, but here’s something interesting (NOT):
anti-vaxxing and homeopathy… for pets.
Best Friend says her Bengal cat suffered renal failure due to vaccines… Any truth to the claim that animal are actually sensitive to vaccines? Seems like the kind of argument used for human anti-vaxxing (you know how vaccines cause autism and all that, right? right?), but I’m wondering if there could be some basis to it (at all) when it comes to pet-animals like cats and dogs – different biologies and all that? My instinct says no, but… I’ve been known to be wrong before, when trusting my instincts!
Anyhow.

*hugs* for all those in need – I leave a stack here that, hopefully, will last the night.
This place is awesome and I love you all! (No, I’m not feverish this time.)

Billingtondev:
You may not be able to help your daughter to the extent that you would like at the moment, but it seems like your questioning and second guessing have led you to change your interactions with your daughter a bit. From what you’ve said about reading here, it sounds like you’ve benefitted from some of the stories people have shared. Perhaps the continued second guessing, along with tweaking your interactions with your daughter may prove beneficial for her in time. I hope that she comes to understand the importance of your words sooner than later.
****
Anyone have that utter mental block that prevents you from putting thought to page? Not so much ‘I don’t know what to write’, so much as ‘How do I translate what’s in my head to the page’? That was me trying to express myself above.

On the note of women and their accomplishments, my mentor-cum-judge emailed me an invite to her swearing in ceremony, along with thanks for my help with some of her client files (she’s sending me paying clients though, along with other sundry wrapping-up tasks so it’s not like I’m really giving too much gratuitous help). I responded that I’d be honored to attend. She responded “If anyone should be there, it’s you.”

Anyone have that utter mental block that prevents you from putting thought to page?

All. The. Fucking. Time.
Or when the Vocabulary Banks crash in mid-sentence, leaving me flailing. Frustrating on The Weebs, even more so in Verbal Space. Leaves me feeling like a particularly untalented Charades player.
“What is it, cicely? Timmy’s fallen into the Hellmouth?”
–

I responded that I’d be honored to attend. She responded “If anyone should be there, it’s you.”

There might be something in both my eyes.

See? We arent’ the only ones who recognise your General Awesomeness.
:)
–

I’m all for a form of socialism with a grand dose of democracy, but I just don’t see how communism – in its ideal, perfect state – would actually be workable, considering the fallibility of human nature.

Ok, ok, okaaaay, I’ll go and check out the dome in a minute, but I’ll just stick my standard rejoinder in here.

The biggest reason for failure of any utopian system, not just communism, (the kibbutzes didn’t really go much as planned), is the folly of not taking account of the society and relationships you’re trying to replace. Looking at Russia, the revolutionaries wanted to get rid of the disparity between the privileged rich and the poor, to get rid of the secret police, to change the way marriage and sexual relationships worked along with other things. 10 years after the revolution? Secret police running rampant, political leaders might not have been aristocrats but they did have dachas and other trappings of luxury, the awards for women producing multitudes of children were now handed out by the party rather than the tsars.

The same reasons apply to those societies that have successfully implemented better social and political systems. They started out with good legal systems and both the populace and the body politic respected the rule of law. Societies that are riddled with overt corruption and general distrust of institutions and the operations of the legal system have first to get over this hurdle before they can hope to implement any grand, let alone grandiose, scheme to transform themselves.

Just going to borrow a few hugs from the pile if that’s okay. Damn, the linked story in “Do You Have Kids?” thread hit me hard.

Hey chigau. Good to see you again.

I asked a while back about your archeology background because we’ve been finding rocks on our house site that really look like they’ve been used as tools. Ones with look to my untrained eye like they’ve been used to grind stuff, and others that look like they’ve been used to sharpen knives or somesuch. Could I post a couple of picture for you to look at? Assuming of course that that’s within your area of expertise. I’m not looking for anything definitive here, just an opinion from someone who knows more than I.

The house site had a train station on it from 1890. I’m not sure when it was taken out but the line closed in 1983. So the knife sharpening ones don’t seem to unlikely. The land was filled and leveled at some point too so these things, if they are in fact artifacts, could have come from anywhere. Though were sitting right at the intersection of two valleys and is the nearest high(ish) point to that intersection. It’s very much the kind of place that people would naturally camp.

FossilFishy
Most of my “expertise” is with knapping of stone tools as opposed to grinding.
I don’t really know how Australia worked but in North America everyplace with intersecting watercourses is where people would be.
My current internet access is spotty, so I’m not reliable for an opinion.
but any locale that is well disturbed is not a good place to find informative artifacts.

Oh dear, the earth is shaking and the heavens quaking, there’s some kind of FTB re-formatting a-goin’ on!

Oh I know that there’s no hope of any kind of science coming out of our block, I was just wondering if my take on these things is correct. I’m not sure I’d know an artifact from a natural rock even if the creator hit me upside the head with it. :)

FossilFishy
Maybe the mobile version will stop hounding me for days on end. That would be nice. I spent the whole weekend ‘mobile’, which is about the most annoying thing ever.
So, how’s the world in the future?

Little One lost her first tooth! I pitched in a dollar and Grandma put a car under her pillow for the toothfairy. Little One has fallen asleep at Grandma’s woke up, got her presents and came home to me. Well, she was SO upset because she was comparing what she got with what her friends at school got from the tooth fairy. She thought it was so unfair and didn’t understand why the tooth fairy didn’t like her. So I told her the truth. The actual truth. See, everyone thinks (yes, including my mother) I’m so mean and taking away the fun of childhood because I didn’t even want to start this bullshit with lying about the tooth fairy and santa. Little One gets all excited and happy about those things, so it was hard to argue the point.

Oh, but then the injustice harms Little One because we can’t give things like her friends parent’s. Little One naturally thinks she’s done something wrong or they don’t like her or whatever. The truth helps her. The truth is good. But I’m still the bad guy. I get the “Well, if you were working, you could afford to give her a normal childhood!”.

Yeah, I’m totally unemployed because I just looooove living like this *eyeroll*

JAL
Seconding John Morales.
If the lie is harming her, then the lie is of no use, because the whole point of Santa and tooth fairies is that they make childhood more enjoyable.
By the way, what do her friends get for losing a tooth? Back in my day, it was a quarter (at best), no toys… It’s just a tooth, after all.

JAL
*hugs*
Funny, #1 believes in the Tooth Fairy much more than in Santa or anything. First time she lost a tooth I knotted it into one of Mr’s hankerchiefs and she insisted that we call daddy to make sure he doesn’t mind that the toothfairy gets his hanky.
But wtf are kids getting from the toothfairy?
We’re not poor and #1 wouldn’t have gotten more for a tooth.
And what the others said.

+++
Also: the wonderful smug feeling when somebody gives a presentation about the woes of plastic water bottles and you have your nice metal tea flask on the desk…

That’s the thing. It wasn’t really anything extravagant. One friend got Dora stickers for her first tooth and a mini MLP surprise pony for her second. There was also the boy who got 5 bucks for his first tooth because “he was such a brave boy”. (Ugh, that phrase.) There’s also the people who put it in a baby book together or got cards from different family members because of it. Talking with the other parents it seems like they make a bigger deal with the small things because they can’t do bigger things like vacations and stuff. Most families around here are bigger than ours anyways so it seems like they make a bigger fuss, when really they just have more people to celebrate it.

It was just more like “Why didn’t the tooth fairy know I wanted that instead of this and why did so-and-so get all the cool stuff?”, which lead her down the path of self-blame.

Surviving The World is a comic I’ve been following for awhile (though I’ve gotten very behind lately). I don’t remember seeing it mentioned here but I could be wrong. There’s also his other comic and the program for teachers to teach STEM to K-12, which are linked at the bottom of that comic.

Good tv alert: there is a new show on ABCFamily called “The Fosters”. It’s about a family made up of one biological child and two adopted ones (fraternal twins) who then take in another girl and her little brother. Standard schlocky fare, right? Except that the biological child is white, and the twins are Latino/Latina, and the mom is black, and oh by the way the other mom is white. Lesbian couple head of household. It’s treated as mostly normal in a way that’s a bit unrealistic (I don’t know how they could adopt as a couple in California), but also doesn’t do the fake “everyone in this world is completely tolerant” move (when the new girl comes she says “So you’re dykes”, and one of the kids dryly says “They prefer the term ‘humans’, but yes, they’re gay”). So far I’m quite interested.

Why yes, I’m finally on a summer lull at work and watching a lot of tv.

More dreams about scouts. More little details finding their way through. I remember most of what happened. I accept that it happened. I (usually) understand and accept that I am not and was not responsible. Fine.

So why has my brain decided that, since I remember some of it, since my brain has figured out how to access those memories, that it needs to pull them all out? I do not need to remember that objects were used, not just parts of his body. I do not need to remember the special pain as cold beer was poured into me. I do not need to remember every time he spanked me because I had failed to please him properly. I really don’t I remember enough.

I feel like my brain is out of control. Since I (my brain) learned where these memories are stored, I seem to have this compulsion to dig out every one, worry it until I can see where I was at fault, and then go on the next dish in the never-ending banquet of pain and guilt. But what scares me the most is that I am not in control. And if I am not in control of what memories I am accessing, then I am not in control of who I am. And if I am not in control of who I am, or, at least, who I pretend to be, then who am I?

/TW

I did have one non-nightmare. Arguing with a graphics programme to create a map which someone else had already made but I didn’t discover that until well after I was fully involved in the map I was creating in a cheap graphics programme.

Portia – right now you can watch the pilot at abcfamily’s website as well.

Forgot to mention that it also packed in a brief reference to gender issues – the girl had flown into a rage at her former foster father because her little brother had “tried on a dress and he [foster father] beat the hell out of him for it”. I don’t know if they’ll explore that more later on, or if it was just a shortcut to indicating that the foster dad had been violent and macho.

What a godsdamned sadist that man was. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t your fault then, and remembering it now isn’t your fault either. If we all had control over our brains, the world would be a much more pleasant place for all of us.

Well, apparently giving Cat’s tail a sharp tug is not the way to invite it to play. As discovered by Youngest, who, since becoming bipedal, has developed a taste for chasing the poor feline around. The said poor feline, however, is surprisingly patient with such random acts of violence, and while it has raise a paw against such treatment, it has not unsheathed a single Claw. (Yes, I supervise such interactions.)
Sometimes animals are smart. I remember similar reactions to Middle Child, who only recently (due to size? speaking ability? random factors?) has acquired ‘adulthood’ in Cat’s eyes, and is wholly deserving (in Cat’s eyes) of occasional use of the Claw for transgressions against Cat’s cathood (pulling of the ears, excessively enthusiastic petting, etc.).
Husband and I never got such consideration – Touch the Belly and ClawClawClawClaw! [/random]

Trent Franks, a Republican congresscritter from Arizona, is pushing yet another anti-abortion bill. If you thought that Republican’s had passed enough anti-abortion bills … well, they don’t think so.

Abortions would remain legal (well, some abortions) but only if pregnancies are terminated within the first 20 weeks.

And … there’s more. Republicans are prepping another anti-abortion bill, one that would allow women in immigration detention to be denied an abortion based on the say-so of an employee with no medical training. Wait, doesn’t this go directly against the “no more anchor babies!” shouting from the right?

That same bill-in-the-prep-stage “is specifically written to ban abortions in what are called “medically futile pregnancies,” involving fetuses so badly compromised that they have no chance of survival. The bill is intended to force women to carry such pregnancies through to the doomed birth.”

I can’t help but notice that Republican men are going after women’s rights, yes, but their fallback position is to first go after women who are more or less helpless to oppose them. For example, they first tried to pass the 20-week abortion rule for the District of Columbia, which, conveniently, has less representation in the House.

Another example: if you can’t make all the bitches carry a non-viable fetus to term, at least you can make the bitches in immigration detention carry god’s little dead babies to term.

And lastly, if bitches in immigration detention want/need an abortion, let’s give some sadistic prison employee with no medical training the right to refuse them. We the Republican males would really like to apply this treatment to all women, but let’s at least apply it where we can get away with it.

And Timmy is on his own; I’m no hero, nor do I play one on TV.
–*pouncehug* for JAL.

The truth is good. In my opinion, you did right. Encouraging a child to blame themselves for things that are out of their control, is Religion’s job.
–*hugs* and sympathy for Ogvorbis.

So why has my brain decided that, since I remember some of it, since my brain has figured out how to access those memories, that it needs to pull them all out?

In the interests of Full Disclosure? Contents Under Pressure? Spite?
AFAIK, nobody can (fully) control what memories their sleeping brain barfs up, or the surreal stuff it throws together to season the Memory Salad.
Fucking brains—how do they work?*moar hugs*
–

If we all had control over our brains, the world would be a much more pleasant place for all of us.

Very This. No more Epic Disaster Movie dreams? Can I get a Hell, yeah! from the Studio Audience?
–

Mostly trying to keep it as calm as possible in the lounge. That’s why I took my politics over to the ‘Dome, after the first couple posts. Despite recommendations she wouldn’t, so I didn’t know what to do but try to disengage from it to keep it from escalating until she took it elsewhere.

1) having and engaging a sense of empathy and fairness that applies to everyone, not just to certain select groups I consider “Us” or who meet some particular threshold of being mistreated by third parties
2) one debatable poor word choice that…

…um….

…I still can’t even wrap my mind around literally everything else I had to say being ignored because of that one phrasing choice. I mean, I can see the initial misinterpretation if it really has as narrow a connotation as was claimed but over and over and over and over? It’s like drawing a triangle and a plane and getting angles that add up to two hundred and banana degrees. What the hell?

Can neurotypicals process this kind of thing? Can you write me an instruction booklet or something? :(

I felt a bit guilty about the whole business with sleepingwytch, since I started it by criticizing her comments. But then again, I don’t think my criticism was wrong. So… *shrug* Not sure how to feel about it.
—-
Azkyroth,

I’m not sure how much is due to being neurotypical people, and how much to just being people. We’re all weird to each other and ourselves.

I think Josh should never have accused you being a MRA-supporter, and he was right to retract that. If you’d like to know, I think where the trigger was tripped, so to speak, was where there wasn’t an explicit acknowledgement that using social justice language for non-social justice issues (mocking clothing choices) is hurtful. I understand where you’re coming from, I really do. I think carlie’s comprehensive comment over there was great. I also feel like it’s kind of crummy to skate around the fact that using the language of social justice for a non-SJ issue feels like equivalency and it feels like it trivializes stuff like misogyny and gay-bashing. I know that wasn’t your intent, and I got that from your comments on the subject. I think the discussion would have been well-served by explicitly saying that you understood the use of that phrase was wrong for the context, even if you didn’t mean it. I hope my run-on sentences have made some sense.

Azkyroth
I was not aware there was such a narrow interpretation of terms, too. :/
As for the parallels, I have no idea how it works, because by definition all analogies fail somewhere because they are, you know, analogies not the thing being discussed. But where the line is, again, I don’t really know. I suppose it differs for different people, especially when there are some people who deal with all kinds of shit but with the same vocabulary on a daily basis. It’s hard to dial down. And maybe the same vocabulary isn’t appropriate for more mundane situations – but what to use instead, I don’t know. :(
Sorry I can’t help out any more than that.
*hugs* if you still want.

Beatrice
To be honest, I was quite shocked with the response you got – you criticized the idea, not sleepingwych (from what I saw). Then again, I’m not sleepingwych, so I’m not as personally invested in those ideas being expressed, and I might have just as harsh a reaction to someone critiquing some idea of mine. *shrug* I don’t think you did anything wrong. If we’re not here to discuss ideas, then what are we doing? Just plain socializing?

Um, “Splash damage” is a term from the language of video games to describe the effect of certain video game weapons (explosives, especially) where they cause damage on “hitting” to characters who aren’t the target but happen to be in physical proximity – potentially including the friendly characters or even the player character. The utility of this as an analogy for the social-justice-relevant effect of certain behaviors is obvious – but so its utility as an analogy for the effects of other behaviors – like the one I was referring to.

I didn’t know it was a video game term. I don’t think social justice “owns” it. I think in the context of a sociopolitical discussion on this blog, though, the context is important. I’ve only ever heard it used here as a shorthand for the idea that using slang for oppressed groups as a perjorative is a bad thing. If it’s used more broadly, then I plead ignorance and modify my point accordingly. I don’t know what the consensus of usage here is, I only know my observations.

As an aside I just want to say before I log off that this is sort of why I never felt the comradely of the horde some people talk about. I sometimes got the impression that people don’t really give a turd toss about anyone’s feelings sometimes. I’m sure I’m guilty of it too but yeah. Whatever. It doesn’t matter if people’s feelings are hurt I guess if it isn’t part of systematic oppression

I sometimes got the impression that people don’t really give a turd toss about anyone’s feelings sometimes.

I tend to chalk that up in the ‘nobody’s perfect’ column. Sometimes when you’re wrapped up in your own pain it’s hard to care as much about others’ feelings, and a lot of folks here are in painful places. Everybody’s a jerk sometimes, too; we lash out, or misstep and hurt unintentionally. Generally, the folks here make an effort not to be, and make an effort to make amends when they are, most of the time, which is more than can be said for most places. Furthermore, outpourings of compassion and support definitely outnumber the disputes and fights, which is once again a step up from most places. There’s no such thing as perfection, after all.

Wow. You go out of town for a couple of days and miss quite alot apparently. At lease the sun is shining, the wind is blowing, and I’m getting garlic scapes in my veggie box today. So that is something to look forward to.
–
As far as making fun of people’s clothes, my dad used to do that when I was a kid. We would see a family in denim jumpers and he would just start making fun. And it felt mean. It felt wrong. Yeah, it is stupid that they think that women have to wear jean jumpers all of the time, but still. That being said…. well it has been said better than I can articulate already. I hope everyone gets to cool down and also feel validated, because I see several areas of agreement.

I felt a bit guilty about the whole business with sleepingwytch, since I started it by criticizing her comments. But then again, I don’t think my criticism was wrong.

I don’t think so, either. Disagreement with her conclusions ≠ transphobia, any way you slice it. And all Portia did was suggest that if the conversation was going to get acrimonious, the [Lounge] was not the proper venue for it; also ≠ transphobia.

The best construction I can put on it is that sleepingwytch felt massively threatened by the disagreement, and struck out at you and Portia (and I guess “all of [us] transphobes” as well) in a spectacularly emotional over-reaction.

But I could be wrong.
–
Lightning-fast *pouncehug* for iJoe.
–

It’s just customary that if the discussion is turning shouty, you take it to the ‘Dome.

Yes; this right here what Dalillama said.
–
And also what that Schmott Guy said right here.
–

Part of my crankyness is that I’m all depressed and sad partially about stuff I can’t talk to meatspace friends about, but I figured I could at least vent and get advice in lounge. Don’t really feel comfortable doing that now.

Part of my crankyness is that I’m all depressed and sad partially about stuff I can’t talk to meatspace friends about, but I figured I could at least vent and get advice in lounge. Don’t really feel comfortable doing that now.

For a while, I was researching running shoes. Ads galore. I wish there was a button for “I was reverse-show-rooming you, Internet, I bought that in a meatspace store from a real person.” Technology is something…the cookies are cross-referencing you, broboxley.